Revision as of 18:21, 15 April 2013

This ontology represents an initial recommendation for extending schema.org to support lodging businesses. It represents work Thematix has successfully used to improve search for several hotel chain franchise operations, but is subject to change based on evolving requirements and feedback from operational deployments. For background, you may wish to read our "<a href="http://thematix.com/travel/lodging/Open Letter To Hoteliers_1.1.pdf">Open Letter</a>" to hoteliers concerning these extensions

All extensions refer to URLs at thematix.com, except where entities already exist at schema.org. These extensions are not endorsed or accepted by Schema.org. However they will validate at the <a href="http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets?url=&view=cse" target="_blank">Google Rich Snippets tester</a> and will not "break" the web page. Thematix stands ready to assist you with these extensions, with schema.org markup or other <a href="http://thematix.com/services/">semantic consulting and development.</a>

As part of the extension process, we have introduced a number of new properties. Some of these are defined in the above type definitions; others are proposed new properties whose domain is existing types. These new properties are as follows:

hasAmenity. This property's domain is <a target="_blank" href="http://schema.org/LocalBusiness">LocalBusiness</a> or <a target="_blank" href="http://schema.org/Product">Product</a>. Its range is <a href="http://thematix.com/travel/lodging/Amenity.html">Amenity</a>. "hasAmenity" is a property relating a product or business to a feature considered an amenity. The choice of "product" as a domain of amenity is based on its dictionary definition as "being or having a quality of pleasantness or desirability. It's usual application is as applied to a place or a piece of property".

hasRentalRateFeature. This property's domain is <a href="http://thematix.com/travel/lodging/RentalRate.html">RentalRate</a>. It is a string. It serves to describe a feature, amenity or service associated specifically with the combination of the offer and rate. For example, to limit the availability of the rate to certain guests (retirees, service personnel, etc.)

<img src="Microdata Generator Using Schema.jpeg" width="150" height="50" align="left">Finally, we are indebted to our friend
Zack Flannick,
who has created a <a href="http://www.microdatagenerator.com/hotel-schema">Hotel Extensions microdata generator</a> at his excellent <a href="http://www.microdatagenerator.com/">Microdata Generator</a> site. It is a great tool for the webmaster who is just getting started learning about schema.org and wants to instantly produce usable markup. Thanks Zack!!